Teaching Goals to Students

Our first blog post of the year was inspired by my recent visit to the wonderful Maddy Brown’s Spanish 1 classroom in Greenwood. What follows is a set of directly usable resources and a series of videos from her classroom. It’s all directly aligned to Priority 3 of our Humanities Vision this year:

Generating a shared vision with students and measuring progress towards that vision.

What was remarkable about Maddy’s lesson on Goals was that it took the time, over the course of a full lesson, for students to:

Identify what strong Goals and Action Plans look like.

Create personal Goals and Action Plans for this year in Spanish.

Understand and feel invested in the Class Goals.

At the same time, Maddy made sure that she was being responsive to students, listening to their concerns about Goals (and even fielding the tough question “Why are we spending so much time on Goals? Why aren’t we learning Spanish?”). You can also see how Maddy seamlessly integrates Spanish cognates and love for the content as they set and learn about goals. Amazing!

Check out the resources and video links below to start implementing this in your own classrooms!